Posts Tagged ‘Georgia’

I could fill books with this very important stuff. I mean, it’s only about if we are going to survive as a civilized society or not. Nobody of our “dear” international politicians and “leaders” seems to care very much. But I am going to try to be “brief”.

So back to the whole “system” of rules and law on which the international “peace and order” has been built on since 1945. In reality it goes back even further to the Peace of Westphalia 1648.

Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation-state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country’s domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law.

And ALL these international organizations and laws (UN, EU etc.,) that were supposed to guarantee peace and stability and economic progress, is in complete shambles. Why? Because all the “big ones” in Europe and the USA have done absolutely nothing to defend it besides some rhetoric and symbolic sanctions. That costs nothing for them and has very little effect.

By doing nothing, they have opened up the Pandora’s Box and a free for all to “intervene” anywhere in the world where there are at least one minority person. And that applies to EVER country and territory in the world. If not you just surreptitiously transport one there, (preferably one from your own intelligence agency or military), let him became “spokesperson” for the group. And voila, you have a just cause to “intervene with brutal force and take whatever you want.

In Russia ALONE there are over 185 officially recognizedethnic groups, nearly 20% of the Russian population.

You Reap What You Sow

Now you take this new world model and apply it to every country in the world. And what do you get? Total chaos and slaughter – “Survival of the fittest” military style.

The village of Nikishyne

On an equally important side not regarding The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed on December 5 1994.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, newly independent Ukraine suddenly found itself in possession of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. (About 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads designed to strike the U.S. and 2,500 shorter-range nuclear weapons).

Though the new government originally planned to keep the Soviet nuclear weapons it had inherited on its territory, Ukraine eventually agreed to transfer the weapons to Russia for reprocessing. USA played a big part behind the scene to make them relinquish their nuclear weapons.

Under the memorandum, Ukraine promised to remove all Soviet-era nuclear weapons from its territory, send them to disarmament facilities in Russia, and sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Ukraine kept these promises.

In return, Russia and the Western signatory countries ,(Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, along with Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and John Major), essentially consecrated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as an independent state. They did so by applying the principles of territorial integrity and nonintervention in 1975 Helsinki Final Act — a Cold War-era treaty signed by 35 states including the Soviet Union — to an independent post-Soviet Ukraine.

In the ”Budapest Memorandum,” Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States promised that none of them would ever threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. They also pledged that none of them would ever use economic coercion to subordinate Ukraine to their own interest.

They specifically pledged they would refrain from making each other’s territory the object of military occupation or engage in other uses of force in violation of international law.

France and China also provided Ukraine with assurances similar to the Budapest Memorandum, but with some significant differences.

After the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in February 2014, these legal “guaranties” proved to be completely worthless. Zip, Nada, Niente.

The message to the world is LOUD and CLEAR: Whatever you do NEVER, EVER give up your nuclear weapons.

By doing nothing the signatory parties in an instant made a MOCKERY of the last 60 years effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. And the treaty of nuclear Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) from 1970.

It also sent out another equally LOUD and CLEAR message to the world: To guarantee your survival GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

And this terrifying message gets even clearer when you consider North Korea and Iran. In the latter case these “negotiations” has been going on and off for nearly 20 years

The latest round (the so called Iran and the P5+1) started in February 2014 with a very strange setup pushed by the Obama administration. First you do a lot of unilateral concessions and then you start negotiations. USA gave back frozen money ($4.2 billion + $2.8 billion), eased sanctions ($7 billion + $1.5 billion), ignored the intercontinental Ballistic missile program, that every UN Security Council Resolution has been broken, every broken promise to IAEA, denial of inspections, the vastly expanded enrichment program, the big stockpile of enriched uranium etc. etc.

And to REALY top it off: The Chief US nuclear negotiator with Iran is Wendy Sherman. She is Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth-ranking official in the U.S. Department of State. The SAME WOMEN how was in charge of US negotiations with North Korea to stop them from getting nuclear weapons.

Yeap, we ALL KNOW how that went.

At the present moment the Obama administration have given the Iranians a lite over 80% of what they want without getting anything in return.

When the time comes when Iran “officially” goes nuclear it will have an instant and immediate effect – the rest of the Middle East will ALSO go OFFICIALY nuclear.

Doesn’t that sounds like a really lovely and peaceful world wouldn’t you say?

Little Green Men

Back to Ukraine and just a few tidbits of the last two days:

Yesterday (February 14) the day before the “ceasefire”, there was about 170 attacks on Ukrainian positions.

Just one example (and remember this is ALL happening in the “peaceful” Europe): In the late afternoon yesterday there was a full-scale engagement of tank and mechanized units of Ukrainian troops meeting the Russian armed forces on a stretch of Nyzhnje Lozove – the northern suburbs of Novohryhorivka. The battle did not bring a convincing victory to either side, but the Russians stopped trying to assault Lohvynove, leaving this settlement as “neutral” territory.

Today (February 15), so far, about 10 attacks around Debaltseve and Luhansk. But a lot of active regrouping and reinforcements is going on the Russian side.

A few examples: Russian troops transferred a fresh tactical group (up to 20 tanks, 10 ACVs, and 200 personnel) to the vicinity of Lohvynove.

The Russians continued transferring reinforcements to the Shyrokyne village area, trying to “isolate” the offensive by Ukrainian units along the stretch of Shyrokyne – Sakhanka. The transfer of an infantry formation from the vicinity of Bezimenne has been observed ­– over 100 people, 5 armored vehicles and up to 20 motor vehicles.

Another convoy (about 5 transport units) with wounded soldiers (about 200 people, the majority are Russian mercenaries and soldiers) has arrived to the settlement of Krasnyi Luch. The majority of mercenaries are the recruits of Russian intelligence services –Russian citizens who had no previous experience in the military.

Un update: The Russian’s is most active in shelling in the direction of Debaltseve. In particular, from 12:00 am to 3:00 pm EEST 42 fire strikes have been recorded in this area:

In addition, the Russian’s has carried out four attempts at an offensive during that time in the direction of Debaltseve, attacking the positions of Ukrainian troops near the settlement of Chornukhyne.

In addition, 2 fire strikes at civilian objects by ‘DNR’ insurgents and Russian mercenaries were recorded in Donetsk (8:25 am and 3:10 pm EEST – mortar attacks on city blocks). Also, ‘DNR’ mercenaries attacked civilian targets in Popasna at 12:15 am EEST from MLRS. In all three instances, the fire strikes took place in the areas where there are no [firing] positions of Ukrainian troops.

Yeap, the same old same old “ceasefire”. First the one on September 5 2014 and now the Minsk 2 from February 11.

Little Green Men

42 attacks in three hours just in the Debaltseve area. That’s international diplomacy and peacekeeping for you. Angela Merkel and François Hollande can be REALLY PROUD of their “ACIVMENT”.

This is just a very small sample of what has been going on day in and day out for the last 9 months. Here in Europe. The continent of “peace”.

And most of the western so called “leaders” again and again throughout history with disturbing and catastrophic regularity pretend that nothing is going on. Nothing to see, nothing to do, move on.

Because if you pretend hard enough that the really bad things that are happening here and now, is not happening; then you can pretend that everything is “OK”. And then you don’t need to do anything that “disturbs the peace” and the mind of your population with unpopular and hard decisions. At least long enough so someone else has to take care of the mess.

The problem with that of course, as history has proven so many times, is that the longer you wait to deal with a serious problem, the harder and costlier it is going to be to “solve it”. And if you wait long enough it becomes “unsolvable”.

Syria is an excellent case in point.

That is a formula that here in Europe has led to two world wars, the cold war, internal civil wars, total political oppression, censorship, massive and total surveillance of the population, concentration and GULAG camps, slave labor, organized and state supported mass killings, ethnic cleansing on massive scale, massive deportations, euthanasia programs, the master race, blood purity, the New Soviet man, enemies of the people etc.

And we “exported” these ideologies to the rest of the world.

All this in just the last hundred years.

Yeap, we have a lot of things in Europe to be “proud of”.

To make some more points about recent events I leave it to the “locals” east Europeans to explain. They have survived occupation and deportations by Nazi Germany and they have survived occupation and deportations by Soviet Union. So I think they learned a few things:

“In the 1930s, Hitler pursued a simple policy: he simply said one thing and did another. Putin has innovated: he not only lies but uses forces to do his bidding for which no one holds him responsible and thus has the chance to be accepted by some in the West as a “responsible” statesman while continuing his aggression in Ukraine.

Thus, the most important news from Minsk is not that there has been an agreement between the Kremlin leader, the German chancellor, the French president and the Ukrainian president on most of the aspects of a ceasefire but rather that the leaders of the undeclared “peoples republics” are refusing to go along.

Citing “an informed source,” TASS is reporting today that the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics have refused to sign the document “agreed upon by ‘the Normandy quartet,’” thus in one sentence presenting Putin in a way the West will like and showing that what he has signed will have no impact on what he continues to do.
That is just one of the important conclusions about the Minsk meeting suggested by Andrey Piontkovsky who points out in a commentary today that “the very fact of its having taken place is much more important than the little pieces of paper which [these leaders] will sign or not sign”.

The Minsk meeting which follows on the Moscow meeting between Putin, on the one hand, and Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, on the other, reflects a significant change in the way the West is dealing with Putin over all issues and is showing up the Kremlin leader’s position at home, the thing he cares most about.

At the time of the Brisbane summit, Western leaders were demonstratively isolating someone who was invading Ukraine and otherwise violating the international rules of the game. According to Piontkovsky, that threatened Putin’s standing with precisely those on whom his survival depends.

“The power of the dictator depends on the unqualified subordination to him of two or three dozen people: senior civilian, police, media and military officials,” he writes. And these people are completely behind Putin as long as he could guarantee them wealth based on stealing from Russians at home, the ability to keep the results of their theft in the West, and “a sweet life there for several generations of their descendants.”

Russians firing at Debaltseve.

After Brisbane, it began to look as if he no longer could provide such guarantees, and they began to question their support. But Putin responded with a clever campaign in which he caused the leaders of Europe to change their approach and thus restore his unchallenged authority at home with precisely those on whom his dictatorship depends.

Putin’s response took the form of suggesting that Moscow was prepared to use nuclear weapons if the West armed Ukraine, a campaign that has its roots in the words of Dmitry Trenin, the former GRU officer who heads the Moscow Carnegie Center, first in 2009 and most recently in an interview to a British newspaper.

That sparked fear in Europe that Putin might in fact use nuclear weapons, split Europe from the United States with regard to Ukraine, and led both Merkel and Hollande to “walkd to Canossa” first in Moscow and now in Minsk, a dramatic shift that convinced those around Putin that the Europeans are so afraid of Russia that they won’t do anything to oppose its actions.

This nuclear “blackmail” has been “at many levels, taken many forms and been creative,” Piontkovsky says. It has made use of the North Koreans, Rogozin, Ivanov, Shoygu and others. And most recently, it has taken the form of a Russian TV spot showing Russian tanks “visiting” the capitals of Europe on Victory Day.

And Putin’s propaganda ploy has worked. The day after US President Barack Obama’s nominee to be defense secretary said the US would increase military assistance Ukraine, including possibly lethal arms, Chancellor Merkel announced that “Germany does not intend to sell arms to Ukraine since it considers that the conflict does not have a military solution and that diplomatic efforts must continue.”

She certainly had read Dmitry Trenin in the Financial Times and heard the warnings of German analyst Alexander Rahr, and she drew exactly the conclusion that Putin hoped for: The Americans are engaged in a reckless policy and Russia might respond with “tactical nuclear weapons,” something that would affect Europe but not the Americans “beyond the ocean.”

Consequently, she and Hollande rushed to Moscow and then to Minsk, allowing Putin to put on the show of being interested in peace even though his agents show that he is not and thus taking exactly the steps that shore up his dictatorship rather than weakening it and leading Moscow to change its dangerous course of aggression.”

“Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first post-Soviet leader and honorary chairman of the conservative Homeland Union, says that the Minks agreement for ceasefire between Kiev’s forces and Moscow-supported separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, which was signed on Thursday, is worse than the Munich agreement of 1938.

The conference in 1938 has come to symbolize Western impotence after Great Britain and France tried to appease Adolf Hitler by giving him Sudetenland, which led to occupation of Czechoslovakia and, eventually, World War Two.

”In that Munich conference, there probably weren’t any Sudeten SS men speaking in the name of the nation and demanding to carve up Czecholsovakia. At least they were not sitting at the table. And these [Ukraine’s separatist fighters] did,” Landsbergis said on Thursday, after presenting his new book in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania.

The politician noted that the Minsk talks on the future of Ukraine gave word not just to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but also to self-appointed leaders of the separatist-held regions, Igor Plotnitsky and Alexander Zakharchenko.

Words of defeat

The Minsk agreement demands the withdrawal of heavy military equipment behind a 50-kilometre demilitarized zone. Kiev has pledged to implement a constitutional reform, delegate self-government powers to the separatist regions and resume payments.

”As you read through it [the agreement], you are aghast – why do they have to give up everything? Everything. Give territory, recognize these bandits as leaders who get invited to the table and allowed to sign documents. Why give this legitimization to Putin’s mercenaries?” Landsbergis wonders, adding that the same line was agreed on in ceasefire talks on 19 September 2014.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, asked to comment on the constitutional reform outlined in the agreement, noted that it would involve decentralization, not federalization. Landsbergis thinks, however, that these are words of the defeated party.

The situation on February 15

”These are talks of the defeated. First, the mercenaries should not have been allowed to sit in the talks. If countries negotiate and Russia is dictating the kind of constitutional reform they should have, then one can ask – where is your own constitutional reform, when are you starting to respect your constitution, Mr. Putin? Otherwise, shut up and don’t tell us about the constitution. We are a democratic country with a popularly elected parliament. I am an elected president, Poroshenko could say. Whereas you appointed yourself,” Landsbergis says.

He adds he is disappointed with German Chancellor Merkel, who, he says, believed Putin’s ”puppet theatre”. This is how he sees Merkel’s statements that Putin had exerted pressure on the separatists to sign the agreement.

”She accepted the puppet theatre. What they did in the end was a puppet show. Perhaps everything followed stage instructions. Putin allegedly demands something of his groupies and they do not listen. He must put his fist down and they insist they will still be able to refuse. All sane people should realize this was but a silly show, but they take it seriously. Why sink to such a low level?” Landsbergis is indignant.

The Kremlin says boko haram

During Thursday’s event at the Foreign Ministry, where Landsbergis presented his new book on 13 January 1991 events to foreign ambassadors, he insisted that Western powers should arm Ukraine.

”I still believe that the Ukrainians could be armed against Russian tanks. Otherwise it means that Ukraine has been sold out. It’s worse than Munich. We should discuss Munich today,” Landsbergis told the audience.

The Lithuanian politician, who led Lithuania’s own liberation from the USSR efforts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has said that Russia is telling blatant lies, which are nonetheless accepted as something worth discussing. ”This way, everything becomes partly true, partly false, but in fact it is utterly false, because it is a purposefully designed lie aimed at influencing our judgement. It is war on thinking,” he said.

Landsbergis believes that there have been only a few moments when Russian leaders were told the truth. Once, US Secretary of State John Kerry told Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that he couldn’t listen any more of what the latter was saying.

”Only one person, as far as I know from the media, Secretary of State John Kerry told Lavrov: It’s impossible to listen to you, Mr. Lavrov. It was reported, though I wasn’t there and no one recorded it. But it was reported that Kerry couldn’t listen to what the Russians were saying. In normal parlance that means: Go to hell, liar,” according to Landsbergis.

”President Barack Obama, too, once said he had nothing to talk about with Putin. However, they [Russians] manage to force Western leaders into talking not just with them, but also with the bandits from Donetsk,” he added.

According to Landsbergis, Russia has declared war on the Western civilization.
”West is the enemy. The Kremlin said so. In Arabic, that translates to boko haram. That’s the Kremlin’s slogan, boko haram.”

Boko Haram is the name of a terrorist Islamist movement based in northeast Nigeria. The name in Arabic means ”Western education is forbidden”.

”However, Western leaders have their excuse: we do not want war. But war is on, lady. Yet she sees nothing wrong in Ukrainians being killed,” Landsbergis said. He insisted that Western Europeans were not unaffected by the conflict, reminding that the Russian-supported separatists downed a passenger plain over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people, mostly from the Netherlands.

”It did not crash, it was shot down, with all the people inside, it fell down 10 kilometres while people were still alive,” Landsbergis said.”

Russian tanks destroyed near Debaltseve

Putin’s Incredibly Shrinking Russian World – Why He Insisted on Minsk for Talks

Staunton, February 14 – Despite his success in intimidating some European governments into inaction or even willingness to come to terms with the results of his aggression, Vladimir Putin in fact is having to cope with an ever-shrinking Russia world as his insistence on Minsk as a venue for talks about Ukraine shows.

Indeed, had European leaders understood that the Kremlin leader could hardly tolerate talks anywhere else, they would have been in a far better position to make more demands not only of Putin concerning Ukraine but also of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, their official “host” in the Minsk talks.

In a comment for the Charter 97 web site, Iryna Khalip, a Belarusian journalist who writes regularly for Moscow’s Novaya Gazeta, says that Putin needed his meeting with the German chancellor and the French president to be in Minsk “and not in any other place in the world” for three reasons.

First of all, she says, Putin chose Belarus because it is one of the few places outside of Russia where he feels himself to be “the master.” That is not the case in Kazakhstan, and the Kremlin leader isn’t inclined to travel beyond the borders of his Eurasian Economic Community whose rulers defer to him most of the time.

Second, Belarus was about the only place where the Donbass separatists “could feel themselves safe” and where they would “not only not be arrested but would be able to sit at one table with the adults.” That gave them the status Putin wanted them to have, and just their being at the same talks was “sufficient” for his purposes.

And third, “by insisting on Minsk as the site of the meeting, Vladimir Putin reduced to nil all the declarations of the leaders of the EU countries made after the mass arrests” in Belarus in December 2010. At that time, they said that any high level contacts between the EU and Belarus were impossible.

Despite those declarations, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande came to Minsk, where they were hosted by the author of those arrests, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and said nothing about the freezing of former presidential candidate Mikola Statkevich or anyone else. He remains in prison. Had the Europeans insisted, Putin would have convinced Lukashenka to release him.

Russian tanks destroyed near Debaltseve

Khalip then addresses the larger problems of this venue as a summit. Summit meetings, she points out, are not occasions for negotiations but rather “the last stage” in such a process. But Merkel and Hollande acted otherwise and that gave Putin the opportunity to “wrap them around his little finger” and get what he wanted out of the session without yielding anything in return.

“The difference between Merkel and Hollande, on the one hand, and Putin and Lukashenka on the other is that the latter two not once for many years has kept his word,” Khalip writes. The Europeans are accustomed to the idea that promises will be kept, while Putin and Lukashenka assume that promises are made for anything but that.

And the Europeans, or at least Merkel and Hollande, suffer from another problem as well: they can’t afford to take part in a meeting after which they would have to say to their electors at home: “forgive us, we weren’t able” to reach an agreement. That means they need to know going into a meeting what will be agreed to or they will be manipulated.

This need also means that the Europeans do not always understand what the meeting is about or what the other side wants. Putin knew what he wanted at Minsk and it was not about the Donbass. He had much bigger goals in mind, including the end of sanctions, an end to his isolation, and a reaffirmation of his role in Belarus.

“Europe in these negotiations thus demonstrated all its weaknesses,” Khalip says, including its “complete inability to defend itself, its lack of a strategy toward the Russia of today, its indifference to the territories of others,” and its willingness to pay off bandits like Putin and Lukashenka in order to continue to live quietly until they make new threats and new demands.”

The village of Nikishyne

Germany and France ‘Sacrificed Ukraine’ for National Economic Interests, European Parliament Vice President Says

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, “without the participation of the EU and promoting the economic interests of their own countries, have sacrificed Ukraine,” Czarnecki says, legitimating Russia’s “achievements” and creating a world more beneficial to Moscow than to Kyiv.

In other comments, the Polish and European politician says that it is unfortunately the case that some European countries “would like to have peace at any price,” something they may have achieved in the short run by their concessions at Minsk but not something that is likely to last for long.

On the one hand, Czarnecki says, the pro-Moscow militants in southeastern Ukraine with continuing Russian backing are likely to try to seize even more territory and undermine Ukrainian statehood. And on the other, Kyiv will have no choice but to try to block them whatever the Minsk accords say.

By insisting on the negotiating arrangements in Minsk, Putin not only excluded the US, legitimated his agents in Ukraine, but has divided Europe still further, an amazing Russian achievement but one that the leaders of Germany and France in large measure facilitated, something that Ukrainians and all people of good will should never forget.”

Donetsk airport from drone

‘What Can Ukraine Expect from the West Now?’ Former GULAG Inmate Asks Bitterly

This is a statement from Myroslav Marynovich, founder of Amnesty International Ukraine, a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and President of the Ukrainian PEN Club. He was arrested on April 23 1977 and he was sentenced to seven years’ hard labour and five years in exile. The same year Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. He spent a decade in the Soviet GULAG camps in Kazakhstan, and he has issued the statement below about how Ukrainians feel about what is happening to them now.

I write to you as a former prisoner of conscience of the Brezhnev era. All other titles are rapidly losing sense in the light of the bleeding Ukrainian Maidan.

All my life I admired Western civilization as the realm of values. Now I am close to rephrasing Byron’s words: “Frailty, thy name is Europe!” The strength of bitterness here is matched by the strength of our love for Europe.

If it still concerns anybody in decision-making circles, I may answer the question in the title.

First and foremost, stop “expressing deep concern”. All protestors on the Maidan have an allergy to this by now in these circumstances senseless phrase, while all gangsters in the Ukrainian governmental gang enjoy mocking the helplessness of the EU.

Take sanctions. Don’t waste time in searching for their Achilles’ heel: it is the money deposited in your banks. Execute your own laws and stop money laundering. The Europe we want to be part of can never degrade the absolute value of human lives in favor of an absolute importance of money.

Also cancel Western visas for all governmental gangsters and their families. It is a scandal that ordinary Ukrainians living their simple lives have to provide their ancestors’ family trees to obtain a visa while ruling criminals guilty of murder, “disappearances”, and fraud in the eyes of the whole world enjoy virtually free-entry status in Europe.

Do not listen to Yanukovych’s and Putin’s propagandistic sirens. Just put cotton in your ears. Be able to decode their lie; otherwise they will decode your ability to defend yourself.

Instead, listen to Ukrainian media sacrificing their journalists’ lives to get truthful information.

Do not rely so much upon the information provided by your special correspondents in other countries who come to Ukraine for a day or two. Hire Ukrainians who live in this country to translate the Ukrainian cry of pain. Secure money for that right now instead of waiting for funds from next year’s budget.

Come to Ukrainian hospitals and talk to so-called “extremists” who want to “subvert the legitimately elected government,” those who have “cruelly beaten” policemen and “deliberately” blasted explosives to wound themselves.

Yes, the face of war is cruel. But, arriving at the Maidan, these people repeated almost literally what King George VI said to his people on the 3 September 1939: “We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called… to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world.”

Go out of your zone of comfort! Just recall the coddled ancient Romans who refused to do that in time. Cajoling Putin won’t bring you security. Letting him take control over Ukraine could make the world peace even more vulnerable. A Ukraine divided by force won’t bring the world peace, just as a Poland and Germany divided by force didn’t bring peace to the world.

Let us conclude in solidarity with the King and the Ukrainian people: “The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield, but we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with God’s help, we shall prevail.”

Russians firing at Debaltseve.

And to sum up the Russian mood: Russian TV says how Russia will capture Europe by May 9

Russian propagandists dream about holding the May 9 parade in Europe.
A story of a Russian TV channel on February 10 was posted on the Internet. It tells that Russian troops can reach Warsaw within 24 hours and then “visit” Berlin, Prague, Vilnius, Tallinn, Riga and, finally, London.

It sounds like a very boring technical detail, and it is, but it plays an important part in the official manipulation of the temperature record. Others have shown this before and done a very good job presenting it. But it is worth repeating because most people have no idea on what shaky grounds the temperature records are based.

I have written extensively on this blog about the tweaking, “adjustment” and manipulation of the historic and present temperature “record” which are presented in the official figures.

With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations around 1990 – roughly 63 % of all climate measuring stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations are back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

So what is a “smoothing radius”? And why is it so important?

A smoothing radius is: EVERYTHING within 1200 km in ALL directions from the weather station IS GIVEN THE SAME TEMPERATURE AS AT THE STATION!

Regardless of facts, geography and data.

Here is the official description: “Smoothing radius: Distance over which a station influences regional temperature.”

This is of course a VERY HANDY tool. First you drop most of the measuring stations. And the one you chose and keep are very strategically placed. Then you let the stations you ”kept” decide, or as they so nicely put it “influence” the temperature within a radius of 1200 km.

Now you can influence and “control” the official world temperature “record”.

And remember –This dropping of stations was done on purpose. And what “happened” to the temperature after that – the temperature went up sharply.

Hmnnn??

Can there be a connection???

To recapitulate:

In 3 years, from 1989 to 1992,5218 stations were purposely “dropped”.

From 1993 to 2000 1384 more stations were “dropped”. A total of 6602 stations.

And if we compare with 1970 with1992 8445 stations have been “dropped”.

If we compare 1970 with year 2000 9829 stations have been “dropped”.

And remember – Nearly ALL OF THESE STATIONS ARE STILL THERE AND GENERATING DATA.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

So let’s look at the difference so you can understand why this “technicality” plays such a big role:

1200 km (745.7 miles) smoothing

250 km (155.3 miles) smoothing

Noticing any difference?

The difference is HUGE and VERY revealing.

See ALL these grey areas that “suddenly appears” in the 250 km one? These huge areas of the globe which are grey are the ones where they don’t have ANY DATA. (I.e. the data is there but they don’t use it since dropping of ALL these stations).

That is also why they always “officially” use the 1200 km smoothing in their graphics.

So that you wouldn’t know that Antarctica, Arctic, HUGE PARTS of Africa and Asia is NOT covered in “their measurements”.

Also notice, and this is VERY TYPICAL of them, that ALL these parts that ARE NOT COVERED ARE ALL VERY RED (i.e. very hot).

Do you think this is by coincidence?

And what does that says about the “science” behind this?

And also remember that a 250 km smoothing in it self is VERY large.

If you could use a 100 km smoothing you would see EVEN more parts of the world in grey – i.e. there is no data.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

To show you how ABSURD a 1200 km (745.7 miles) smoothing is if used in ANY “scientific” way or shape or form, I am going to give you 3 examples.

Stockholm.

If the weather station is placed in Stockholm (Sweden) the temperature there would be given to Moscow, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warszawa, Kiev, Oslo, Helsinki and Prague etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

Paris.

If the weather station is placed in Paris (France) the temperature there would be given to London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Dublin, Budapest and Prague etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

Denver.

If the weather station is placed in Denver(Colorado) the temperature there would be given to Las Vegas (NV), Phoenix (AR), over the border to Canada and Mexico, St Louis (IL), Minneapolis (MN) and Dallas (TX) etc.

You see how TOTALLY ABSURD THIS IS.

That’s why “officially” the high Bolivian Andes can have a “record warm” when the temperature is actually measured 1200 km away at the beaches in Peru. Or in the jungles of Brazil.

There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990 from Bolivia.

None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.

So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?

Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away.

“The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…”

The same goes on in the Arctic.

And the Antarctic.

And over huge parts of Africa.

And over huge parts of Asia.

And over huge parts of Latin America.

And over the oceans which make up 70% of the surface of earth.

So to sum up the “science” behind the “Global Temperature Record”:

It doesn’t cover 70% of the surface, Antarctic, Arctic, huge parts of Africa, huge parts of Asia and huge parts of Latin America.

Besides that everything is just fine.

Another brilliant example of the trustworthiness of the Global Warming Hysteria.

I have written extensively on this blog about thetweaking, “adjustment” and manipulation of the historic and present temperature “record” which are presented in the official figures.

With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” tocool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations around 1990 – roughly 63 % of all climate measuring stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations are back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Just one example of this historical “adjustment and tweaking” they are doing:

On average 20% of the historical record was modified 16 times 2006 to beginning of 2008. The largest single jump was 0.27 C. This occurred between the Oct 13, 2006 and Jan 15, 2007 records when Aug 2006 changed from an anomaly of +0.43C to +0.70C, a change of nearly 68%.

And what a “coincidence” that the data is always “modified” in only on direction – guess which one.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

And as I said in the beginning – always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, “adjusted” and manipulated to fit there agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius – 1200km etc.)..

Just a couple of weeks ago a new report was published by Patrick Frank that shows that there has NEVER been a measurement of Sensor measurement uncertainty in ALL the weather stations used for the “Global” temperature “record”. And that “the systematic error from uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected”.

UNCERTAINTY IN THE GLOBAL AVERAGE SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE INDEX: A REPRESENTATIVE LOWER LIMIT

“Sensor measurement uncertainty has never been fully considered in prior appraisals of global average surface air temperature. The estimated average ±0.2 C station error has been incorrectly assessed as random,and the systematic error from uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected. The systematic errors in measurements from three ideally sited and maintained temperature sensors are calculated herein. Combined with the ±0.2 C average station error, a representative lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C was found for any global annual surface air temperature anomaly. This ±0.46 C reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000 is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C, and represents a lower limit of calibration uncertainty for climate models and for any prospective physically justifiable proxy reconstruction of paleo-temperature. The rate and magnitude of 20th century warming are thus unknowable, and suggestions of an unprecedented trend in 20th century global air temperature are unsustainable.”

Future noise uncertainty in monthly means would greatly diminish if the siting of surface stations is improved and the sensor noise variances become known, monitored, and empirically verified as stationary.

The ±0.46 C lower limit of uncertainty shows that between 1880 and 2000, the trend in averaged global surface air temperature anomalies is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C at the 1σ level. One cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that it is presently impossible to quantify the warming trend in global climate since 1880.”

So I thought I show you the drastic dropping of weather stations in 1989-1992. Others have shown this before and done a very good job presenting it. But it is worth repeating because most people has no idea on what shaky grounds the temperature records are based.

And remember –This dropping of stations was done on purpose. And you can see on the graph what “happened” to the temperature after that. For some very “odd” reason it went up sharply.

Hmnnn??

Can there be a connection???

And remember – Nearly ALL OF THESE STATIONS ARE STILL THERE AND GENERATING DATA.

In 3 years, from 1989 to 1992,5218 stations were purposely “dropped”.

From 1993 to 2000 1384 more stations were “dropped”. A total of 6602 stations.

And if we compare with 1970 with1992 8445 stations have been “dropped”.

If we compare 1970 with year 2000 9829 stations have been “dropped”.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

1970 (15 094 Stations)

1990 (9 475 Stations)

2000 (5 265 Stations)

Where did all the stations in China, India, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Russia, Antarctica, and Australia go?????

AND WHY??????

Whole continents “just disappeared” and most of the landmass of Earth is now NOT COVERED.

And how do you compare the “average” Global temperature when they dropped 9829 stations between 1970 and 2000??????

9829 stations that where part of the “average” global temperature????

This is the “science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

And it gets worse (which in itself s an “achievement”). Look at the map for 2010 – EVEN MORE landmass are “gone” on purpose.Including large parts of USA. See the huge contrast between 2000 an 2010 regarding USA.

How “they” (NASA) make Bolivia a VERY HOT PLACE EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO TEMPERATURE STATIONS OR DATA FROM THERE.

Another brilliant example of the trustworthiness of the Global Warming Hysteria.

And “their science”.

“One Small Problem. There has not been any thermometer data in GHCN since 1990.

None. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.

So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data?

Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away.

So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know? (The official excuse given is that the data acceptance window closes on one day of the month and Bolivia does not report until after that date. Oh, and they never ever would want to go back and add date into the past after a close date. Yet they are happy to fiddle with, adjust, modify, and wholesale change and delete old data as they change their adjustment methods…)”

Here are some more glaring examples of this “tweaking and adjustment” of the temperature “record”:

“NASA/NOAA homogenization process has been shown to significantly alter the trends in many stations where the siting and rural nature suggest the data is reliable. In fact, adjustments account for virtually all the trend in the data. Unadjusted data for the best sites/rural shows cyclical multi-decadal variations but no net long term trend as former NASA scientist Dr. Ed Long showed here. He showed howeverthat after adjustment, the rural data trend was made consistent with the urban data set with an artificial warming introduced.“

Just look at this “tweaking” done by NASA/NOAA in August 2007 to the temperature “record”. They just “happened” to LOWER the temperature 1880-1900 by OVER 0.3 C and then they just “happened” to RISE the temperature 1990-2007 by OVER 0.2 C. So “suddenly” you have a nice “warming trend” where there were NONE before. In fact it was a lowering trend from year 2000 which “suddenly” change to a warming trend with OVER 0.4 C difference.

NASA and NOAA, which each receive close to half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding, have been systematically fiddling the worldwide temperature record for years, making “global warming” look worse than it is, according to a new paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute. The findings are reported by Joe D’Aleo, a leading meteorologist.

Robert Ferguson, President of SPPI, said: “Despite billions spent on official claims about the supposed threat of catastrophic man-made ‘global warming’, opinion polls show the public are no longer fooled. A main reason why the voters buy don’t climate alarmism any more is that the tiny but well-connected, lavishly-funded Climategate clique keeps on being caught out bending the scientific evidence.

The problem of data integrity has recently been commented on by MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, “Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data…That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community.”

Mr. D’Aleo’s paper is a damning exposé of the inner workings of two agencies of the US Government –

• The global temperature data from surface stations is “seriously compromised: the data suffer significant contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as changes in land cover and land use”. Numerous peer review papers suggest contamination of 30%, 50% or more.

•The state of the temperature database, in the words of one of its operators, is “hopeless”, with “hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy and duplicate stations”.

•The NASA warming is achieved in part by inventing data in arctic areas where no stations exist.

•In the US, the warmest decade of the 20th century was the 1930s, and the warmest year was 1934, NASA’s chief climate scientist announced after the last super El Nino.

•NOAA tampered with temperature data in 2000, 2007 and 2009 to create an artificial increase of 0.3 F° in the warming trend since the 1930s.

•NASA admits even today on their website, there is no generally-accepted standard for surface air temperatures.

•Temperatures for the 1930s to 1950s have been readjusted downward to make the warming since then seem greater than it is.

•Temperatures for recent decades have been readjusted upward to make the warming of the 20th century seem greater than it is.

•Over time in the NASA database, the warming trend has been steadily increasing – not because the weather is getting warmer but because NASA keeps tampering with the data.

•The data tampering became more serious and more frequent in 2007, when a strong la Niña caused widespread and profound global cooling.

•Adjustments by NOAA and NASA, rather than real-world temperature changes, account for virtually all the apparent warming trend in the global data.

•NASA and NOAA have repeatedly resisted Freedom of Information Act requests for release of the unadjusted data and documentation of adjustments made, probably because they fear independent analysis will demonstrate the adjustments are unwarranted and warming insignificant

•Global temperature databases are “seriously flawed” and “can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts”.

In a lengthy paper updated in August 2010, Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? , Watts and D’Aleo catalogued numerous case studies of temperature data tampering around the world. This issue is of critical importance because these very data sets are used as justification of advocacy for formulating and implementing unprecedented policy decisions seeking radical transformations of our society and institutions.

Said Ferguson, “So blatantly obvious has the tampering become that Congress must mandate a thorough investigation of the temperature records, independent of the government scientists controlling them. A ‘B’ team of non-government and non-UN experts must be established with access to all the raw data, records, adjustments, fudges, bodges and computer codes currently being black-boxed by government scientists.”

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once reported are no longer being used in data trend analyses.

5. There has been a significant increase in the number of missing months with 40% of the GHCN stations reporting at least one missing month. This requires infilling which adds to the uncertainty and possible error.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island and land use change contamination.

8. An increase in the percentage of compromised stations with interpolation to vacant data grids may make the warming bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Changes in data sets introduced a step warming in 2009.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. Additional adjustments are made to the data which result in an increasing apparent trend. In many cases, adjustments do this by cooling off the early record.

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multi-decadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Due to recently increasing frequency of eschewing rural stationsand favoring urban airports as the primary temperature data sources, global terrestrial temperature data bases are thus seriously flawedand can no longer be representative of both urban and rural environments. The resulting data is therefore problematic when used to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP should trigger a review of these documents assessing the base uncertainty of forecasts and policy language.

Did you see any headlines like this from the “Mainstream media” who otherwise are so eager to spread the Global Warming Hysteria?

NO – And this exactly the point. Because, despite this drastic lowering of temperature, life goes on as normal in Florida and Georgia.

And since this was a drastic lowering of the temperature, and does not fit their agenda, no big headlines except in some of the local media.

Isn’t it interesting that a PREDICTED (by their beloved computer models) rise of temperature of 1.5-2F in the next 100 years is considered a catastrophe for humankind and an eminent treat for our survival?.

By the way, these computer models are the same models THAT CAN NOT PREDICT THE WEATHER A WEEK FROM NOW, OR THE WEATHER A WEEK AGO.But they claim that they can predict the temperature a 100 years from now with 0.1F certainty!

As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And these guys spends billions and TRILLIONS of $ of our tax money to “fight” this predicted “Global Warming” and to “reduce” our “carbon footprint”. Ramming through their political agenda at all costs.

So lets look what happened in Florida and Georgia in December.

And remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking”tocool the past etc.

Florida:

This year, the December temperature is – 8.6 F coolerthan1931, the warmest December And if we compare this year’s December with 1971 it is– 6.7 F cooler. If we compare with1998 this year’s December is – 14.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is -14 F cooler

This December is – 9.3F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the coolest December in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

And somehow a DROP of -9.3F degrees in one month compared to the average is not considered a “big deal”. In fact it is ignored. But a “predicted rise of 1.5-2F over a 100 years is considered by the same Global Warming Hysterics to be a total catastrophe for humankind.

So to recapitulate: a DROP of average temperature of – 0.3F PER DAY is nothing, ignore it. But a “predicted” rise of average temperature of 0.02F PER YEARis a total catastrophe for humankind.

By the way, if you wondered, 0.02F per year is 0.00005F per day.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

2010 temperature

This year Florida’s temperature is – 3.3 F cooler than1990, the warmest year. And if we compare this year with 1948 it is – 3 F cooler. If we compare with1911 this year is – 2.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is – 2.3 F cooler

This year is – 1.33F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the 5th coolest year in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

Georgia:

This year, the December temperature is – 17.3 F coolerthan1931, the warmest December And if we compare this year’s December with 1971 it is -16.5 F cooler. If we compare with1984 this year’s December is – 15.8 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is -13.2 F cooler

This December is – 8.34F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the coolest December in 116 years.

That’s what I call RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind!

And somehow a DROP of -8.34F degrees in one month compared to the average is not considered a “big deal”. In fact it is ignored. But a “predicted rise of 1.5-2F over a 100 years is considered a total catastrophe for humankind.

So to recapitulate: a DROP of average temperature of – 0.27F PER DAY is nothing, ignore it. But a “predicted” rise of average temperature of 0.02F PER YEAR is a total catastrophe for humankind.

This is the ”logic and science” behind the Global warming Hysteria.

2010 temperature

This year Georgia’s temperature is – 3.4 F cooler than1921, the warmest year. And if we compare this year with 1998 it is – 2.8 F cooler. If we compare with1946 this year is – 2.7 F cooler. And if we compare with 2007 it is – 1.7 F cooler

This year is – 0.91F degrees cooler than the average for 1900-2010. And is the 22nd coolest year in 116 years.

In August 2008, Russia launched an invasion of Georgia that sent shock waves reverberating – first across the post-Soviet space, but then also into the rest of Europe and the world, as the magnitude of the invasion and its implications became clear.

This invasion took the world by surprise. But what should have been surprising about it was perhaps the extent of Russia’s willingness to employ crude military force against a neighboring state, not that it happened. Indeed, Russia had for several years pursued increasingly aggressive and interventionist policies in Georgia, and had employed an array of instruments that included military means, albeit at a smaller scale. In the several months that preceded the invasion, Moscow‘s increasingly blatant provocations against Georgia led to a growing fear in the analytic community that it was seeking a military confrontation. Yet western reactions to this aggressive behavior remained declaratory and cautious in nature, and failed to attach cost to Russia for its behavior.

After invading Georgia on August 8, Russia did score some initial successes in portraying the invasion as a response to a Georgian decision to militarily enter Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia. Yet a growing body of evidence rapidly emerged, implying that Russia’s invasion was premeditated, not reactive – or in the words of a leading Russian military analyst, planned, not spontaneous.

Indeed, as the chronology included in this paper shows, Russia had been meticulously preparing an invasion of Georgia through the substantial massing and preparation of forces in the country’s immediate vicinity. Scholars will debate whether Russian tanks were already advancing inside Georgian territory when Georgian forces launched their attack on Tskhinvali; yet there seems little doubt that they were at least on the move toward the border. And the scope of the Russian attack leave little doubt: it immediately broadened from the conflict zone of South Ossetia, to the opening of a second front in Abkhazia and systematic attacks on military and economic infrastructure across Georgia’s territory. Within days, tens of thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles roamed Georgian roads.

Russia’s subsequent decisions to ignore the terms of a cease-fire agreement it signed, and to recognize the independence of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, all complete the picture of long-hatched plan. The purpose was not merely related to South Ossetia or even Abkhazia: it served to punish Georgia and expose the inability of the west to prevent Russia from moving aggressively to restore its primacy over the former Soviet Union’s territory, irrespective of the wishes of the governments and populations of the sovereign countries on that area. It is indeed the predetermined nature of this war that makes its implications so far-reaching. It constituted Moscow’s first military aggression against a neighboring state since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1978; and it took place, this time, against a member state of European institutions such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe, and to that a country on track to integration with NATO.

As such, political leaders and analyst soon understood that it formed the largest crisis to date in Russia’s relationship with the West; some have even come to realize that the Georgian war of 2008 may be the most significant challenge to European Security since the Cold War’s end. It is therefore of particular importance to document, already at this stage, how this war started and draw some preliminary conclusions regarding what it means for Georgia, the post-Soviet space, and Europe and the United States. The following pages propose to do so by providing a chronology of events before, during, and immediately after the war; as well as to propose some initial conclusions that could be drawn from this chronology, as well as regarding its implications.

This chronology has been assembled to the extent possible based on multiple and independent sources, as well as on the personal notes of the authors, including experiences on the ground during the conflict. Given the recent nature of the events, however, it is possible that some information reflected here will need correction as more solid evidence emerges. The authors express their gratitude to David J. Smith and Jonathan Kulick for their comments on the chronology. The authors will be grateful to receive additional suggestions for corrections or additions

Russian invasion routes and forces

Klicka på kartorna så blir den större/Click on the maps

Russian-claimed security zone, South Ossetia

Russian bombing targets in Georgia

Summer 2004

Following an operation launched by the Georgian governments to curtail rampant smuggling across South Ossetia, clashes between Georgian forces and South Ossetian separatists take place as Georgia sought to restory authority, with numerous deaths on both sides.

Winter 2005

Sergey Bagapsh assumes the de facto presidency of Abkhazia, following an election in which Moscow backed his opponent, Raul Khadzhimba. Bagapsh’s electoral victory led to strong Russian pressure on the de facto leadership, which forced Bagapsh to include Khadzhimba into his government as Vice President and hand him control of security and defense affairs.

Subsequently, serving Russian security and military officials are appointed to leading positions in the de facto governments of the unrecognized republics. Hence Russian general Soltan Soslaniev served as Abkhazia’s defense minister, while Anatoly Zaitsev became the de facto republic’s chief of staff. Likewise, South Ossetia‘s prime minister, Yuri Morozov, and security chief, Anatoly Barankevich, were among several Russian officers in the South Ossetian de facto government.

President Saakashvili presents peace plans to both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are rejected.

January 2006

Explosions occur on the Russian side of the Georgian-Russian border, damaging a gas pipeline and an electricity transmission line and cutting gas and electricity supplies to Georgia. These explosions occur days after Russia cut energy supplies to Ukraine, and are blamed on unidentified terrorists.

Russia builds a military base in the district of Java, north of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, an area off limits to international observers. The base includes substantial refueling capabilities for tanks and armored vehicles.

July 2006

Under what is officially a law enforcement operation, Georgia takes control of the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, previously run by a local (Georgian) warlord. The Georgian Government-in-Exile for Abkhazia is installed in the Gorge. Georgia also intensifies efforts to internationalize the Russian-led peacekeeping formats in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

September-October 2006

Georgia expels six Russian intelligence agents accused of espionage. Russia responds with a full economic embargo of Georgia, including the severance of all transportation and communication links, including rail, road, sea, air, postal, and banking ties. Russian law enforcement raids Georgian businesses in Russia and begins deporting Georgian citizens.

March 11, 2007

Georgian-controlled villages in the Kodori Gorge are attacked by ground-to ground rocket fire, likely from territory controlled by the Abkhaz de facto authorities. The attack is supported by Russian military helicopters, a fact obliquely confirmed by a subsequent report of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG). Western leaders fail to react to the UNOMIG report.

May 2007

After elections held in parallel with elections for the Tskhinvali authorities, Georgia introduces a provisional administration in the parts of South Ossetia it controlled since the cease-fire of 1992, under the leadership of Dmitri Sanakoyev, a former high official in the separatist government.

August 6, 2007

A missile dropped by an aircraft lands undetonated near a Georgian radar in Tsitelubani in close proximity of South Ossetia, recently upgraded to NATO standards. Two teams of European and American experts conclude that the action must have been performed by the Russian Air Force. A Russian team of experts instead argues the incident had been staged by Georgia to create an impression of Russian aggression against the country.

February 17, 2008

Kosovo declares independence. President Putin claims Kosovo’s independence, if recognized by western states, will set a precedent with consequences for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. A few weeks later, in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Konstantin Zatulin, Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on CIS and Compatriot Affairs, suggests the draft presidential decree may be just the first step toward Russian recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It is important to move now, says Zatulin, while Kosovo is still a fresh issue and well before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. ( For full details and documents, see the October 2007 Silk Road Paper published by the Joint Center, The August 6 Bombing Incident in Georgia: Implications for the Euro-Atlantic Region, by Svante E. Cornell, David J. Smith, and S. Frederick Starr).

March 5, 2008

Tbilisi withdraws from the Joint Control Commission overseeing negotiations over South Ossetia. It instead proposes a format which, apart from Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia, also envisages active roles for the EU, OSCE and the Sanakoyev administration.

March 6, 2008

Russia announces its withdrawal from the 1996 CIS sanctions treaty, which banned trade, economic, financial, transport and other links with Abkhazia.

March 28, 2008

President Mikheil Saakashvili outlines a new peace initiative for Abkhazia, including the establishment of a free economic zone, representation at all levels of the Georgian government, and far-reaching autonomy for Abkhazia.

April 3, 2008

At the NATO summit in Bucharest, Georgia is denied a Membership Action Plan. Georgia and Ukraine are nevertheless assured they will be offered NATO membership at an unspecified point in the future. German chancellor Angel Merkel stresses that a country with unresolved conflicts can nevertheless not join NATO.

April 16, 2008

A Russian presidential decree signed by outgoing President Vladimir Putin instructs the Russian government, as well as Russian regions, to open political, social, and economic relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The decree in many ways establishes relations between Moscow and the two territories that approximate relations between Moscow and its federal subjects. This is interpreted in Tbilisi as a move to legalize a Russian annexation of the two regions.

April 18, 2008

Abkhazia claims Georgia is reinforcing its troops along the cease-fire line and in the Kodori Gorge. UNOMIG nevertheless states that no troop increases have taken place.

April 21, 2008

An unarmed Georgian UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) is downed over Abkhazia. Citing footage from the UAV’s camera capturing its own destruction by a MiG-29 aircraft as well as radar recordings showing an aircraft taking off from the Gudauta airbase in Abkhazia and departing into Russian airspace, Georgia accuses the Russian Air Force of downing the UAV. This triggers a diplomatic row, as Tbilisi claims Russia is engaging in military action in Abkhazia, while Russia denies responsibility, claiming the plane was shot down by the Abkhaz air defenses. A UNOMIG investigation subsequently concludes in May that the aircraft was Russian.

April 24, 2008

At the UN, the U.S., UK, France and Germany, all members of the Group of Friends of the Secretary General for Georgia, express concern over Russia’s policy toward Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and President Saakashvili calls for talks on internationalizing the peacekeeping missions in the two regions.

April 29, 2008

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims Georgia has reinforced its military presence in the Kodori Gorge, preparing for an invasion of Abkhazia. Russia confirms it is reinforcing its peacekeeping contingent in Abkhazia, and setting up several new checkpoints along the InguriRiver. UNOMIG subsequently denies any troop buildup in the Kodori Gorge or along the cease-fire line.

May 8, 2008

Russia confirms having increased its peacekeeping contingent in Abkhazia from 1997 to 2542 soldiers.

May 14, 2008

Abkhazia’s leader Sergey Bagapsh requests permanent Russian military presence in Abkhazia. Such plans are later denied by the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Georgian officials say a war between Georgia and Russia has been avoided due to French mediation.

May 16, 2008

The UN General Assembly passes a resolution tabled by Georgia on the right of return of all IDPs to Abkhazia. The U.S. votes for the resolution, Russia against; most western European states abstain.

May 21, 2008

Georgia holds parliamentary elections. Two buses intended for transporting Georgians in the Gali region to polling stations are blown up in Khurcha, just across the border in Georgia, injuring four. Tbilisi claims the Abkhaz side is responsible. Later reports by UN observers suggest the incident was staged by Georgian officials.

May 31, 2008

The Russian Ministry of Defense sends about 400 troops from the Russian Defense Ministry Railway Forces to rehabilitate Abkhazian railways. Tbilisi accuses Russia of improving the infrastructure in Abkhazia in preparation for a military intervention.

June 16, 2008

One person is killed and four injured in a skirmish between Georgian and South Ossetian forces in the outskirts of Tskhinvali. Georgian forces confiscate heavy equipment including anti-tank missiles from Russian peacekeepers on the Georgian side of the Georgian-Abkhaz administrative border – weaponry that, according to the agreement on peacekeeping, required notification of Georgian authorities.

June 21, 2008

In an interview with the Georgian newspaper Rezonansi, respected Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer stated that a political decision to start a war in Georgia had been taken in Moscow as early as April. He predicted that a war would start in Abkhazia no later than the middle of August.

July 1, 2008

Sukhumi closes Abkhazia’s de facto border with Georgia.

July 3-4, 2008

An explosion in the South Ossetian village of Dmenisi kills a South Ossetian police chief. Later the same day, a mine attack on a convoy carrying Dmitri Sanakoyev injures three Georgian policemen near Tskhinvali. The attack is followed by an exchange of fire between Sanakoyev’s security personnel and unknown gunmen. At least two people die in shellings in Tskhinvali and surrounding villages.

July 5, 2008

The information services of the North Caucasian Islamic resistance publish an article on their website, Kavkaz-Center, stating that Russia will wage a war in Georgia in August, but placing it in Abkhazia.

July 8, 2008

The Georgian MOD reports the intrusion of four Russian aircraft over South Ossetia. Russia confirms its aircraft entered Georgian airspace to ”cool hotheads”, marking the first instance of a violation of airspace not denied by Russia.

July 15, 2008

Russia launches a large-scale military exercise, ”Kavkaz-2008”, in 11 regions in the vicinity of the Georgian border. Approximately 8,000 army servicemen participate in the training, which engages paratroopers, the Pskov Airborne division and the Black Sea Fleet. 700 combat vehicles and 20 aircraft are activated and undergo readiness inspections. The Russian authorities refer to the exercise as a pre-planned counter-terrorism operation, but states also that it aims to prepare the troops for involvement in special peacekeeping operations, due to the latest developments in the region.

July 30, 2008

The Russian Ministry of Defense announces the completion of the repair of the 54-kilometer railway linking the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi with the region of Ochamchire in the Abkhazian conflict zone.

With Georgian government websites shut down by cyber-attacks in the days immediately preceding hostilities, the Russian story of its army coming to the defense of South Ossetia in the face of Georgian assault gained currency. This script is still often invoked as a preface to any commentary or reportage on current developments. However, as facts begin to surface, it is increasingly revealed as a propaganda strategy planned in advance and contradicted by evidence on the ground, by the testimony of neutral observers, and by the increasingly transparent cynicism of its purveyors.

BACKGROUND: From the very beginning of military clashes on the night of 7-8 August, there has been a concerted Russian effort to vilify President Mikheil Saakashvili as a war criminal. In the first days of the conflict, Russian media repeatedly cited a figure of 2,000 civilian casualties in Tskhinvali city and up to 40,000 refugees (out of a maximum 70,000 total population in South Ossetia of all ethnicities). It was on this basis that not only Russian media but also the highest Russian leaders repeatedly condemned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as a war criminal guilty of ethnic cleansing, and promised prosecution in international courts. These claims have faded in recent days, because they have been shown to be false by systematic investigations by Human Rights Watch as well as by the aggregated testimony of foreign reporters who have entered the region since the Russian occupation. In a twist, Georgia has filed a brief before the International Court of Justice charging Russia with conducting and abetting ethnic cleansing of Georgians from South Ossetia and Abkhazia from 1990 to the present.

There is a general view that Georgia assaulted South Ossetia before Russian troops invaded. A detailed timeline provided by Georgia’s Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze during an international telephone press conference disputes that assertion, however. This view is corroborated in most part by several independent sources, and an independent Washington Post reconstruction of events concludes that the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali and the Russian tank column’s emergence from the Georgian end of the cross-border Roki Tunnel could only have been minutes apart at most. Roughly 150 Russian vehicles including armored personnel carriers got through before Georgian forces were able to mount an only partially successful attack on the crucial bridge at Kurta linking the Roki Tunnel with Tskhinvali.

It seems inescapable that Russian tanks must have been on the road from Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, for some time in order to cross the 100 miles of mountain roads to reach South Ossetia when they did. Novaya gazeta’s respected military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer is only one of several writers who have documented how the Russian invasion is only the culmination of a months-long series of provocations as well as strategic and tactical on-the-ground preparations, for example the construction and equipment of a base near the city of Java, northwest of Tskhinvali, as a refueling depot for Russian armor moving southwards. This should be added to the better-known ”railroad repair” troops sent to Abkhazia in recent weeks, who are reliably reported to have constructed tank-launching facilities. The ceremony completing the railway repair was held as late as July 30.

IMPLICATIONS: Reports of fighting on 8 August, for which Russian media were the chief origin, asserted that Georgian forces entered Tskhinvali city early in the day, were then driven back by Russian troops who were said to retake the city, and finally returned to seize parts of the city’s southern outskirts before being repelled for good. However, according to subsequent reports by civilians in Tskhinvali, the Russians never occupied the city; rather, it was combined artillery and aerial bombing that drove the Georgians out of the city. According to Georgian sources, this bombardment was extremely intense and lasted for all the time Georgian forces were in Tskhinvali from dawn on 8 August until just before noon, and continued even afterwards, intensifying again when Georgian forces attempted to re-enter the city later in the day.

Among the weapons systems used by the Russian forces were Uragan and Grad artillery. The latter is the same system that Georgian military affirmed using against Russian military posts outlying Tskhinvali late on the night of 7 August, after Russian armor entered Georgia through the Roki Tunnel. Both sides as well as local observers agree that there was massive aerial bombardment during the day of the eighth. Moreover, American military training provided to the Georgian army over the last few years appears to have concentrated on counterinsurgency tactics, in view of Tbilisi’s contribution of troops to the Iraq conflict.

Given Russian air superiority in the region, it is difficult to suppose that the heavy aerial bombardment of Tskhinvali city came from the Georgian side. Russian sources blame the destruction exclusively on the Georgian artillery assault on the night of 7-8 August, but surviving city dwellers seem to indicate that the Georgian assault was concentrated on the administrative quarters of the Russian-backed South Ossetian separatists, as well as communications links and the like. By contrast, if observers’ reports are to be believed, the degree of devastation visited upon the city by nightfall on 8 August (after Russian bombardment had driven the Georgians from the city) is paralleled in recent history only by the leveling of Grozny in the Second Chechen War of the 1990s.

The Russian side’s signature of consecutive ceasefire agreements without any visible attempt to implement them may also be charitably described as disinformation. This pattern of behavior was first clearly revealed several days ago when, after the Russian and Georgian presidents had both signed French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s six-point ceasefire document, the Russian military began to withdraw from Gori and then, as soon as international media began to report this, literally reversed gear and moved back. As Western video journalists reported live, Russian troops then continued to attack nonmilitary establishments (the nearest military target is a base eight miles outside Gori) while appearing to coordinate with Ossetian and other North Caucasus irregulars who looted property and even abducted civilians.

CONCLUSIONS: What is remarkable about the Russian information policy on the war against Georgia is its failure to adapt to the twenty-first century information environment. Even Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitalii Churkin has lost the charisma that he radiated twenty years ago when, during the heyday of glasnost and perestroika, he became the first Soviet ambassador to Washington to testify to a Congressional committee. Russia’s political leaders hold no spontaneous interviews even with representatives of Russian media. By contrast, Saakashvili’s presence on CNN and other western stations, and his and the Georgian leadership’s command of foreign languages, have enabled them to get their message across effectively.

Late on the night of 18 August, Tbilisi time, the Georgian Ministry of Defense posted a statement (hosted on blogspot.com because of continuing infrastructure and cyberattacks against official Tbilisi websites), saying simply: ”It is absolutely obvious to the international community that the Russian Federation chose destruction of economy with the use of military force and ethnic cleansing as an instrument for implementing its foreign policy.” The credibility of the Georgian message is enhanced not only by reports from foreign journalists on the ground but also by an entirely new element in the information environment: the aggregate of amateur eyewitness reports on youtube.com, ireport.com, and other vlog (video-logging) dedicated websites.

The key issue for 2007 was the presidential succession. Putin made it clear that he would not leave the political stage after the end of his constitutionally-mandated two terms in office. This decision leaves in place the current elite and allows them to continue managing the economic assets they gained control over during the last eight years. The system is characterized by intimidation and political passivity on the part of the population. Russia‘s rating for national democratic governance drops from 6.00 to 6.25. Putin’s decision to remain in power demonstrates that the political system is increasingly authoritarian, with little accountability to the population and few opportunities for substantial public participation in the decision-making process. While the system is stable in the short term, the mid- and long-term prospects are bleak because such a top-heavy government has little ability to understand what is going on in Russian society and react to social change effectively.

Electoral Process.

The State Duma elections were neither free nor fair, setting the stage for similarly controlled presidential elections in 2008. Russia placed such strict constraints on international observers that the OSCE monitors ultimately decided not to observe the elections. The campaign was skewed in favor of United Russia, the party of power, with the authorities making extensive use of state resources to ensure victory. Opposition parties were harassed at every step. The national television networks, under the control of the government, promoted pro-Kremlin parties through their news coverage, thereby creating a playing field that was not level. Russia‘s rating for electoral process drops from 6.50 to 6.75. The 2007 parliamentary elections set a new level of state control over the electoral process in Russia and prepared the ground for equally undemocratic presidential elections in 2008.

Civil Society.

Russia’s NGOs continue to face intense pressure from the Russian state, particularly in complying with the provisions of the 2006 Law on NGOs. The state applies the law more harshly against NGOs it does not favor, and many are having trouble meeting its onerous requirements. Kremlin-sponsored groups like Nashi harass the opposition and Moscow-based diplomats alike. Russia‘s rating for civil society worsens from 5.25 to 5.50 because of the implementation of the Law on NGOs, increasing restrictions on the right to public protest, greater use of psychiatric hospitals against activists, and growing political propaganda in the education system.

Independent Media.

The state continues to exercise extensive control over television, radio, and the print media. Only a few exceptional outlets and the Internet remain open for political discussion. While the Kremlin has not limited the range of free discussion on the Internet, critics accuse it of funding online attacks against opponents, while regional authorities have filed criminal charges against some bloggers who criticize them. Russia‘s rating for independent media remains at 6.25 as the state continues to put binding limits on free expression. Attempts to assert more control over the Internet do not bode well for the future.

Judicial Framework and Independence.

Russia’s courts are subject to political manipulation and can be reliably counted on to return the decisions needed by the authorities. Major problems remain in terms of pre-trial detention, lengthy trials, the failure to implement court decisions, and the poor quality of the defense. The greatest indictment of the Russian court system is the large number of citizens who believe that they cannot get a fair hearing and seek redress at the European Court of Human Rights. Although there are provisions for jury trials, they are rarely used, and the decisions are often overturned by higher courts. Russia‘s rating for judicial framework and independence remains at 5.25 because of the system’s inability to assert greater independence. While some reforms have been implemented, such as increasing the role of judges, it will be a long time before these reforms change the way the system actually operates.

Corruption.

Bribery and other forms of corruption continue to pervade Russian society: Official efforts to address the problem have mostly amounted to politically driven campaigns to discredit opponents. Russia‘s rating for corruption stays the same at 6.00 because in conditions where there is not a free press, energetic civil society, and independent judiciary, there are few prospects for making substantial progress in the battle against bribery and abuse of public office.

”If someone thinks they can kill our citizens, kill soldiers and officers fulfilling the role of peacekeepers, we will never allow this,” Mr Medvedev told a group of Second World War veterans in Kursk. ”Anyone who tries to do this will receive a shattering blow.”

He continued: ”Russia has the capabilities – economic, political and military. Nobody has any illusions left about that.”

”General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of Russia’s general staff, who said that Poland had exposed itself to the threat of nuclear attack from Moscow by agreeing with America to place a missile shield on Polish soil.”

”Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, senior military sources warned last night.

The move, in response to American plans for a missile defence shield in Europe, would heighten tensions raised by the advance of Russian forces to within 20 miles of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, yesterday.

Under the Russian plans, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between the European Union countries of Poland and Lithuania. A senior military source in Moscow said the fleet had suffered from underfunding since the collapse of communism. ”That will change now,” said the source.”

The Russian Northern Fleet has started a training operation in the close vicinity of a Norwegian oil platform in the North Sea. The heavy military air activities have made StatoilHydro temporary halt helicopter traffic to and from the ”Troll” platform

Several types of military ships, as well as a tanker and 47 aircrafts, are involved in the training. Also strategic bombers are engaged, VG Nett reports.

Several aircrafts and helicopters are in the air around the aircraft carrier ”Admiral Kuznetsov”, which is located near the ”Troll” platform. The military flying has made StatoilHydro halt helicopter traffic to and from the platform

The Norwegian Defence confirms that the Russian training is taking place. Norwegian Coast Guard vessels have been sent to the area to monitor the situation. ,More than aircraft carrier ”Admiral Kuznetsov” has started

The Russian Northern Fleet vessels are most probably on their way to the Mediterranian where Russia has signalled that it wants to strengthen its presence.

The training near the ”Troll” platform inevitably contributes to increased uncertainty in Norway about Russian ambitions in the North. Both Norway and Russia have the last years expressed their intention to step up their presence in the area following the plans for major Arctic oil and gas projects.

The Russian training operation near the ”Troll” could possibly be seen as a signal from the Russian Armed Forces about their intention to stay put in the High North and to protect Russian economic interests in the area.

For StatoilHydro, which recently signed a deal with Russia’s Gazprom over the Shtokman field, the Russian exercise can be seen as a sign of which challenges the company could encounter in the Barents Sea.”

27/07/2008 13:01 ST. PETERSBURG, July 27 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will create 5-6 aircraft carrier groups in the Northern and Pacific Fleets, the Navy commander said on Sunday.

Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said the Navy command had decided to build sea-borne aircraft carrier systems for these fleets instead of simply aircraft carriers.

”Everything must work in a system, including aircraft carriers. We have called them sea-borne aircraft carrier systems, which will be based in the Northern and Pacific Fleets. The construction of such systems will begin after 2012,” Vysotsky said before reviewing a military parade on the occasion of Navy Day in Russia.

Vysotsky said new sea-borne aircraft carrier systems will operate in close contact with Russia‘s orbital group of military satellites, and also with the Air Force and air defense.

At present, Russia has only one operational aircraft carrier, the Nikolai Kuznetsov, which was commissioned in the early 1990s and has recently re-entered service after a prolonged overhaul.

The ship, also known as Project 1143.5 heavy aircraft carrier, is currently deployed with Russia’s Northern Fleet and has recently participated in a two-month tour to the Mediterranean as part of Russia’s plans to resume its continual presence in different regions of the world’s seas.”

”On Saturday, the RBN blog, which is run by security researcher Jart Armin, claimed there was a ”full cyber-siege” of Georgia. The RBN blog post claimed that the Russia-based servers AS12389 Rostelecom, AS8342 Rtcomm, and AS8359 Comstar were controlling all traffic to Georgia’s key servers.

According to the blog, German hackers managed to route traffic directly to Georgia through Deutsche Telekom’s AS3320 DTAG server for ”a few hours” on Saturday, but this traffic was intercepted and rerouted through AS8359 Comstar, which is located in Moscow.”

”This is ‘stopgeorgia.ru’ which is also utilizing ‘stopgeorgia.info’ as a redirect; the web site itself provides DDos attack tools for download and as the screen grab shows the mostly .ge web sites as priority for attack. Note; also targeted for attack is the US embassy in Tbilisi.”